Do not move an ancient boundary stone
which was put in place by your ancestors
-Proverbs 22:28

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Muslim Sacrifice

Now
in our continuing study of Islam- we shall examine the Muslim concept of
Sacrifice. A practice which best
demonstrates the concept of Love.

And
here again we have a notion and a
practice which is quite unlike that of the Jewish Torah, which Mohammed claimed to endorse. Quite unlike it in both the Muslim Qur’an and
the Hadith. A distinct moving of the ancient boundary stones found in the Torah.

Now,
what first struck me as I studied the Qur’an some years ago- was the distinct movement
of these ancient boundaries in the very
second Surah . When The Prophet instructs his faithful to
sacrifice a cow (in the surah aptly titled The Cow). Not a male goat, ram or bull as the Torah
insists (Lev. 1:3, 10)- but a cow.

Sure,
females are permitted to be sacrificed in the Torah as well… but not as
Atonement offerings. And not as Guilt
offerings. But only as pleasant Peace offerings
or as Unintentional Sin offerings.
Offerings which don’t even come close to being Guilt or Atonement offerings. Offerings which don’t even comes close to the Mercy Seat. The Guilt
remains and there is no Atonement.

And
the commentary of Sahih 22 is quite
clear on this too… ‘that the prevalent idea of atonement that “it is the blood
that maketh an atonement for the soul” (Lev. 17:11) has no foundation in
Islam’. But that such a “wrong notion and practice” is in fact a “corruption”
of the Torah. A corruption that Mohammed
was allegedly assigned by the angel Gabriel to correct.

A
corruption that Mohammed says not only “cursed him who changed the boundary
lines” but also “him who accommodated an innovator” (Sahih 22:4877). But of course Mohammed was permitted to
innovate during his short period with regard to the eating of those animal sacrifices…
to accommodate their economic blip (Sahih 22:4862).

I
was also reminded of another “correction” that I had noticed while reading this
commentary. The “correction” of Abraham attempting to sacrifice “Ishmael” rather
than attempting to sacrifice Isaac as historically recounted.

Now,
you’d think those Jews would get at least that much right. You’d think Jews would know who their
immediate ancestors were and what their immediate ancestors had done. This traumatic account is not as easily
forgotten or “corrupted” as Islam insists that it was.

Nor
is the traumatic practice of
sacrificing easily forgotten or “corrupted”.
It was a deeply entrenched practice. A practice where those who offered
“strange fire” were swiftly eliminated (Lev. 10:1, 2). Not a
good practice to get wrong. A monumentally important practice that dealt with their very atonement!

But
let’s continue with this “authoritative” commentary. How “the expiation of sin in Islam rests entirely on the good deeds of men”. And that “this fact cuts the ground from
under the feet of any theory of an
atoning sacrifice”.

Uhh,
what “fact” did we miss here? Well, it
seems that we missed the “fact” that God is “Forgiving and Merciful” stuck
between those two statements. And the
implicit suggestion that God is ‘only merciful to those that have earned His mercy’ [sounds more like Justice
to me].

Yet
does this mean that God could NOT be Merciful in providing the actual sacrifice
necessary for atonement as well? As he did with Abraham in that precedential
account? So that it is entirely by God’s Mercy? So that God is entirely to be praised?

Well,
it’s clear that Islam is determined to inject human merit into their atonement-
so that some measure of praise may be attributed to the human. Yet I am convinced that even semi-observant
Jews did NOT inject human merit into their atonement.

As
D.A. Carson suggests in Divine Sovereignty (pg. 33), even semi-observant Jews
recognized (in their Torah) that they were chosen by God by no merit of their
own. That “Yahweh did not choose Israel
as a people because she was intrinsically superior to other peoples (Deut.
7:6-11), nor because she was righteous (Deut. 9:4-6), but rather in defiance of
her rebellion, and out of nothing other than his own free, sovereign, electing
love (Deut. 4:32-40; 7:6-11; 10:14f; 23:5; cf. Ezek. 16:6)”.

Indeed,
God’s election of Abraham despite his repugnant deeds. And despite any foreseen deeds as well. Deeds like having his wife make herself
available sexually to Pharaoh- and later to King Abimelech… for fear of losing
his life (Gen. 12:13, 20:11). A deed
that King Abimelech subsequently recognized as a “sin”… long before the Ten
Commandments were published.

However,
as regards the sacrificial notion of
Mohammed… of how “the sacrifice of animals is [actually] commemorative of
Abraham’s offering [of “Ishmael”]”. What
does this sacrifice actually
commemorate to most readers? What does this offering actually commit to memory?

Does
it commemorate the “extermination and ending of the practice of human sacrifice’
as is suggested in this commentary? The
ending of a “repugnant practice that was not uncommon before
Islam”?

Well,
I’m inclined to think that this would be a novel interpretation to most Jews-
where human sacrifice certainly was uncommon.
And I am far more inclined to agree with Carson that the reason for animal
sacrifice was, “to encourage the concept of atonement by a substituted death” (pg. 92).
A notion made abundantly
evident in Isaiah 53. More than a
millennium before Islam.

Yet
strangely, Mohammed (and Jews) refused to see this notion as a foretaste of the offering to come. The offering of someone so much greater than
“Ishmael”.